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Leader (1850-1860), 15th September 1855, Edition 2 of 2, Page 19, &mmm^3&* I *m&d TSHJB /^ADEB, 895

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      Plfc^Akerptt O3st Warmeffg And Ventilati...

      bf the men whose winds contrive and whose fingers make such machines- -A . pro * - ^ iia ' difference ,-however , betwaen , the two is pointed at by the expression vital mi ^ s contained in & * lastline x > f the preceding table . That difference , described in a few words 4 % that while the machine has to be originally constructed , and afterwards worked and repaired and supplied with every necessary , by intelligence and forces alt ogether external to it , the animal body performs all the offices mentioned , and others yet more surprising , for . itself , by virtue of forces of powers origiaally placed within it by the divine Author of Nature .

      &Mmm^3&* I *M&D Tshjb /^Adeb, 895

      & mmm ^ 3 &* I * m & d TSHJB /^ ADEB , 895

      Translations And Reprints. We Have A Var...

      TRANSLATIONS AND REPRINTS . We have a variety of translations and reprints , of which a few lines , by way of announcement * will suffiee . The plaee of honour is deserved by Sir William Hamilton ' s edition of Dugald Stewart ' s Collected Works ( Constable and Co . ) . The fifth volume contains his Philosophical Essays , slightly annotated . There had previously been no more than three editions , so few are the students of pure truth in these latter days ; but the issue now prepared by one of the first metaphysicians of Europe , is a monument worthy of the first metaphysician of Scotland . Among the Scotch fallacies of the original there are many now finally given to criticism which the commentator neglects to examine or to characterise ; but the writings of Dugald Stewart , as a body , are worth preserving in a permanent , if not in a national , form . They contributed to the history , as well as to the advance , of philosophy , especially in the analyses of such thinkers as Locke and Berkeley , who , in many respects , stood at the antipodes of human opinion . Moreover , it was Sir William Hamilton ' s duty to explain the text , rather than to

      controvert it . Dr . Chalmers' Sermons have been reprinted in a neat form ( Constable and Co . ) . These are sure of general acceptance . The preacher is scarcely less a favourite with the new generation than he was with his own , and so iiis name is written with approval on the fly-leaf between him and posterity . Edward Irving ' s estimate of his qualities , in point of fact , is still held to have been that of a critic , and not of an enthusiast , and this is by no means inex-. plicable , considering the vast number of persons who are intelligent enough to admire learning and eloquence ,. and weak enough to love a formal display of the one and a sonorous redundancy of the other . Chalmers , however , * was not free from the habit of browbeating a docile audience into credulity -or into admiration , which is nearly the same thing ; nor was he so faithful a Covenanter as to refrain , before highly respectable folks , from talking of " the

      common people . " Nevertheless , as good sermons are rare , we must value , An this department , much that is far inferior to the best . There appears , however , to be a call for religious historians no less than for prophets ; but * he call is not so easily answered . Old books on ecclesiastical history are , therefore , welcomed . Here are two of them , in Bohn ' s Ecclesiastical Library —So 2 omen ' s Annals of the Church , in the fourth and fifth centuries ; and . the work of Philostorgius , as epitomised by Photius of Constantinople . The translations from the Greek have been executed with scholarship and -taste by Mr .. Edward Walford , who adds to Sozomen ' s chronicle the criticism . r © f Valerius . Well , even with steam-presses and a fatal facility of composition teaching the idea , old and young , how to shoot , there is room for these Byzantine worthies in their English effigy—especially for the former , as a . ¦ contemporary of Socrates . Some partial annotators , indeed , have ranked ¦ him before that original writer ; though this , of course , was an opinion

      generated in an illiterate and corrupted age . Faint praise may be injurious , but extravagant praise is destructive , so that old Sozomen , in iiis turn , may have a quarrel with Valerius for applauding him too hotly . The best that can be predicated of his compilations is , that they were diligent , and intended to be faithful . As for the history of Philostorgius , it is no more than a fragment or reminiscence of the original , written like an . affidavit , for the real book was lost amid the wreck of ancient learning . How much did those triple fires of Constantinople consume , how many scrolls , -adored by their authors , good or bad , who little dreamed of their immortality ¦ being smothered in ashes . A companion volume of the Ecclesiastical . Library contains the Mosaic biography and dissertations of Philo-Judaeus , the contemporary of Joseph us , translated from the Greek by Mr . Yonge . The translator had a difficulty which must have left him breathless , and which will not end with him , for assuredly every student of the book will be afflicted by . its style . Philo-Judseus was a literary mammoth , who composed sentences in which hundreds of words were wrought together with no relief

      beyond that of a semicolon . He enlarges , repeats , and explains , until his commentary is swollen with excess and overspreads the subject , as a flood drowns a field instead of fertilising it . And yet some of his historical fragments are as terse and as pointed as those of Herodotus . Mr . Bohn ' s edition of Gibbon ' s Decline and Fall of ( lie Roman Empire 4 aas reached a sixth volume , still under the supervision of " An English (( Churchman , " whose notes are added to a variorum gathering from Guizot , Schreiter , and Wenck . " An English Churchman" might well have more carefully revised the text , and left the meaning to explain itself . What , for instance , is added to Gibbon ' s brilliant account of El-Islam and its conquests by our editor ' s platitude , based on Smythe and Bruce ? A note should interpret something in the text which is ambiguous or obscure ; or correct something which is untrue ; or supply something which is wanting . " An English Churchman" rarely does either , but affixes little encyclopeedic scraps , sometimes misprinted , to swell the importance of an edition which must be « mple lumber until some of the volumes at least are cancelled and printed . anew . As aspecimen of the flat commonplace with which the notes of

      * h « original arc mixed up , take the historian ' s reference to his own happiness . iAbdulralVman declared , amid the stupendous luxury of the Caliphate , amid Ws retfmrcs of gorgeous slaves , his pageants of glory , his brides , with a thousand pearls showered on the head of each , that he had enjoyed only 'fourteen'days of pure and genuine felicity . Gibbon observed on this , that the " detractors of human life are commonly partial in their judgments , and immoderate in their desires . " If I may speak of myself ( the only person of whom I can speak with any certainty ) , my happy hours have far exceeded , and for exceed , the scanty numbers of the Caliph of Spain ; and I shall not scruple to . add that many of them arc due to the pleasing labour of the preteat .. composition . " To which "An English Churchman" appends his

      qsemark— "Suich labours may well be happy , and deserve to be so ; their pursuit must not be degraded by a comparison with those which are-oniy prompted by ambition and wealth . " We have certainly no proof that this anonymous moralist , who undertakes to deaden the force of Gibbon ' s unecclesjaatical passages , has ever read the History of-the- Decline and Fall ; but if he had studied it to any purpose , he would never have written about " wealth" " prompting" any one to a pursuit , though the love of it might . We allow that a point like this is trivial , and ought not to be dwelt upon , unless it be characteristic . But when , as in the " English Churchman ' s" case , a pompons editorship results in a badly-printed text , and in a mass of irrelevant anngtations , some protest is necessary . A task of less delicacy , but far more meritorious , has been accomplished by Mrs . Forster in the translation of

      Condi ' s History of the Arabs in Spain . The Spanish editors announce , in their preface to the second volume , that the author died soon after he had completed the work , on which , consequently , he did not bestow the last touches of polish and correction . They had , therefore , to verify some dates which he left undecided , and to follow out his chronological plan . That the book has thus lost in historical weight there can be little doubt ; but its merit does not consist in its accuracy . The narrative is likely to be popular in this country , from being richly worded , full of pictures , adorned with poetical illustrations , and derived , in great part , from manuscript authorities . The colour and force of the original have been admirably preserved by JVJrs . Forster in her English version ( Bohn ' s Standard Library . " ) Yet it is essential to notice that Conde" was not , strictly speaking , an historian . The orthography of proper names varies repeatedly in his work , showing that he followed the author whom he happened to be copying . He borrows , too , the exuMferant eulogies of the-Moorish annalists without qualification or reserve , and thus amuses more than he informs . Thompson ' s translation of the

      Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius , is another useful revival , and appears in Bohn ' s Classical Library under the revision of Mr . T . Forester , who adds , also , the brief and pithy lives of the Grammarians , the Rhetoricians , and the Poets . Among historical biographies may be enumerated The Memoirs of Philip de Comities ( Bohn ' s French Memoirs ) edited by Andrew Scoble . Tlie Scandalous Chronicle ; or Secret History of Louis XL of Jean de Troyes , will appear in the second volume , and will serve to familiarise the English public with the delectable vicissitudes of that noble king ' s career . Last on the file of historical reprints is Mr . G . P . R . James ' s Life of Michard Cceur de Lion which enjoys the honours of a new edition , and has been elevated to the literary peerage in Bohn ' s Standard Library . Remembering that the author was once the representative historian of England—the laureate of prose—we are not surprised at the popular acceptance of such a book , written in such a style—a history turned into a novel , with all the flourishes of romance on horse-trappings , plumes , and vestments wrought in purple and gold . Mr . James is one of those who admires a senator the more for wearing solemn robes , just as he pities a heroine because

      she weeps in a white dress-Kennedy ' s translation of The Oration of Demosthenes on tfte Crown is a piece of good service , meritoriously executed . The foot-notes are useful , the interpretation is clear , and the eloquence of the first of orators is represented in a style remarkable for its rapidity and condensation . But the Appendix is downright book-making . If the noblest discourses of Demosthenes were not enough to fill a large volume , why not put them in a small one , and spare us two hundred pages on the history , the arts , the politics , and public economy of Athens ? The title-page threatens no such impoiition , nor , indeed , is it often that title-pages , immodest as they are , will expose the contents of a solid duodecimo , of which three-fourths are composed of annotation . The riyer on which " ancient Bristol" sits is renowned for its one part of water and two parts of mud ; the old editions of the poets frequently contained a page of " scholia" to every line of verse-, and now

      we have one part of Demosthenes to three parts , at least , of Kennedy or some one else ! Possibly , we admire them both ; but we prefer to admire them separately . From Greek classics to British classics there are many steps—not so many , however , from Demosthenes to Edmund Burke . His Political Miscellanies are now published in a volume of tolerably accurate text ( Bohn ) , with the splendid speech on Economical Reform , the " Reflections "—eloquent , virulent , rhapsodical , and false—on the French Hevolution ; and the Speech on the East India Bill , embodying that " studied panegyric" on Fox which made the House of Commons proud of those two friends so soon to be parted , " like cliffs that had been rent asunder . " A fourth volume of Addison ' s Works contributes to the variety of Bolm ' s British Classics—a volume rich in those smooth passages of moralism which the last century admired because they suited it , and which the present century reads because they suited the last ; because , also , they are written in pure English , in a style which flows like water , and , like water , plays and

      sparkles in the sun . Our translations and reprints accumulate while we write . We have a new volume added to the Beloct Works of Dr . Chalmers { Constable , and . Co . ) . His Lectures on Natural Theology , partly founded on Butler ' s Analogy oj Religion , may be taken as a just specimen of his style—easy , voluminous , little varied . They also evince the author ' s extensive learning , and his familiarity with the formal art of reasoning . The now edition , though without notes , may take its place in theological libraries ; but it must be conceded that Dr . Chalmers , though a clear exponent , and possessed of n strong analytical intellect , was not an original thinker . Passing from scientific to practical religion , we have a fifth volume of Che works of Pliilo-Judceus . translated bv Mr . C . D . Yon / re ( Bohn ' s Ecclesiastical Library )' ire

      This contains his moral and philosophical essays on a " Contemplative J ^ , or the Virtues of Suppliants , " and on the " Incorruptibility of tlio World . He also dedicated a singular fragment to Caius , on tho office of ainlwwaa-. dors , and another to the crimes of Flaccus . The " Questions and bolut ' ° ™ on the Book of Genesis form a body of ingenious ; nvesU ? afcI ??*' Zr , « many of our sectarian might read with profit . Ho 5 ™*? * JS £ T of support of Moses . Ho asks what was the tree of the k jjw todge of good . « md , evil ? and answers , « an Allegory , ^ pwe- * " ^ SSSStSl Sfubjeet with a spirit which would satisfy Dr . Donaldson , although the

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 15, 1855, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_15091855/page/19/